contained more than 100 pieces. so far, five major works and some smaller ones have been returned to cambodia. now, the cambodian government is eager to recover the rest. douglas latchford s daughter, julia, told us in a statement: when i obtained control of it. there were more items on sale at sotheby s back in 1988. this khmer sculpture of a five headed shiva broke all records when it fetched a total of £319,000.
Sitting in a small restaurant in bustling Bangkok, being served by a 21-year-old Cambodian waiter triggered a lot of emotions for me. The waiter came from Banteay Meanchey, a province bordering Thailand. He has been working there alongside a few friends from the same province, unaware of the potential dangers and his vulnerability of being away from home if his job stopped tomorrow.
in 2019, latchford was indicted for art trafficking. he died a year later, before going to trial. this book, co authored by douglas latchford, has become a valuable source of information for investigators. it contains many of the masterpieces that were taken out of cambodia, things that most cambodians will never dream of seeing in person. and it s been used as proof that these items were at least known to latchford and his circle.
is only the statue, but the spirit of ancestor. sopheap meas is an archaeologist with the cambodian ministry of culture. when you saw the statue that s broken into pieces, how did you feel physically when you see something like that? ifeel pain, ifeel sad. ijust.sometimes ijust don t want to see it, too much to tolerate in the feeling, you know? i just don t want to see something like that. itjust comes.it hurts me a lot. sometimes i heard people talk how they destroyed the temple. ijust feel like, oh, my god, that is so painful to hear. this is very beautiful male statue. he have four arms. sopheap is trying to make
most likely a perfect match. you know, like a foot matches a piece that s in a major museum. that s exactly what happened with these huge warrior statues, the team s biggest success to date. the tops of the statues were once on display in the us, but it was the perfect match of their feet left behind in cambodia that proved they d been stolen. they re now reunited, the pride of cambodia s national museum. the cambodian authorities are now on the hunt for more treasure. they re tracing the looters who originally dug up the antiquities. we have a whole network of informants who we re working with, and we are going site to site, where we understand they came from, and interviewing people in that area, and then collecting